July 13 (Bloomberg) -- HSBC Holdings Plc’s North American
head Irene Dorner and global legal chief Stuart Levey will face
Senate investigators’ questions about the firm’s failure to
protect against money laundering, according to a list of
witnesses released today.

The Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will
question Dorner, president and chief executive of HSBC North
America Holdings Inc., and Levey, a former U.S. Treasury
undersecretary hired by the London-based bank in January, at a
July 17 hearing, according to the subcommittee’s list.

The panel, working from its own report of about 400 pages,
will probe the bank’s dealings with embassy accounts,
transactions with Iranian firms and risks of money laundering in
its Mexican operations, according to a person briefed on the
matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the report
hasn’t been released.

During the hearing, senators will question a total of six
current and former HSBC executives and five current and former
government officials. The list includes U.S. Comptroller of the
Currency Thomas Curry, Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and
Financial Intelligence David S. Cohen and Leigh Winchell, an
assistant director in the Homeland Security Investigations unit
of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

‘Case-Study’

The hearing will use HSBC as a “case study” to look at
“the money-laundering and terrorist-financing vulnerabilities
created” when a global bank’s U.S. affiliate gives “high-risk
affiliates, high-risk correspondent banks, and high-risk
clients” access to the U.S. system, according to a statement
from the panel.

“It is right that we be held accountable and that we take
responsibility for fixing what went wrong,” HSBC CEO Stuart
Gulliver said in a memo to his staff obtained by Bloomberg News,
demonstrating the bank will be contrite when confronted with
what he said was “unacceptable behavior.”

Tara Andringa, a spokeswoman for Senator Carl Levin, the
Michigan Democrat who leads the panel, declined to comment on
any specifics of the investigation.

HSBC’s North American units reached agreements in 2010 with
the OCC and the Federal Reserve to fix “critical deficiencies”
in its compliance programs for protecting against money
laundering and terrorist financing.